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In deliberation, the participants' goal is to reach a common conclusion on the best available course of action. The aim of this contribution is to study some deontic aspects that characterize deliberative dialogues as a dialogical (and dialectical) practice. In particular, my exploration is an attempt to consider the way in which deliberation dialogues are structured by virtue of the obligations (commitments, duties) and rights (entitlements, authorizations) that participants assign and recognize each other, on the basis of their performed speech acts. Taking a point of departure in the Austinian approach to speech acts, I will contend that these normative positions, mutually recognized, contribute to determine the illocutionary effect of the utterances and thus the particular speech acts performed in the dialogue. Before that, I will suggest that the proposed claim put forward in a deliberative dialogue can be seen as a verdictive speech act, in that a proposal issues a practical judgement and commits the proponent to giving reasons in support of it. Moreover, whenever an agreement is reached on a proposed claim for action, a new exercitive speech act can be said to have been instituted in which the participants' joint commitment not only concerns the proposal agreed upon, but also the reasons given and the inferential license that connects both.

Abstract Goodwin and Innocenti (2016) have contended that giving reasons may be a form of enactment, where a claim is supported by the very activity of making the claim. In my view, the kind of interaction that these authors are considering should be analysed as a form of advocacy, and therefore as an exercitive speech act. In this paper I will suggest that acts of advocating, qua illocutions, institute a normative framework where the speaker’s obligation to justify cannot be redeemed by a mere “making reasons apparent”. In general, giving reasons is part of the procedure in virtue of which the advocate’s authority to exert influence is recognised by their addressees. This illocutionary effect should be distinguished from other perlocutionary consequences.

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